Tag Archives: inspiration

”Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself,” is beautifully said by Coco Channel.

That’s how personal branding works – explore who you truly are, understand yourself – what makes you unique in this world in how you are and how you add value. And share it forward. Wherever you go, go with all your heart. Do it now, do not wait for the perfect moment. There is no perfect moment. The best moment is now. Take the moment and make it perfect. Decide to be yourself, build your personal brand and enjoy inspiration by adding value.

Are you willing to let your excuses stop you from succeeding? Successful people keep moving. They sometimes make mistakes, but they do not quit. Your ability and dedication to move forward despite any challenges will make the difference. If its important to you, you will find a way. If not, you will find an excuse.

Do you think Edison would have lit that bulb if he gave up after the first few hundred times? Every successful person experienced challenges and failures on their way to success. Keep moving forward, do not quit. Take the learning from the difficulties that you experience along the way and carry on. You can always find an excuse, but you can always find inspiration too!

Change your traditional surroundings if you want to focus and innovate. To achieve a different outcome, you need to have a different perspective, a different environment and inspiration.

I encourage you – to get out of your traditional office environment and find a cosy buzzy place to bring your mindset a different perspective. Believe me – you will be amazed of the inspiration that arrives your way!

How often do you usually take time to revisit your success aspirations and widen your opportunity horizons? To start with, I recommend doing it at least once per quarter. And then – as frequently as you find it necessary. I will further share with you my five tips for constant revisitation.

Create a habit of revisiting your aspirations to ensure you stay on track of your passion and inspiration. Widen your horizons frequently – you will feel absolutely taken by the opportunities that this process creates.

Attend and be present in conferences, breakfast learning sessions, networking events to constantly stretch your mindset and widen your horizon. Build your network of people to connect with, learn and share the learning. It is much more fun doing it together! A few weeks ago I received loads of inspiration at the leadership conference in Riga, Latvia: vaditajukonference.lv I gave a presentation on the Leadership Personal Brand theme and learned from many other presentations and conference participants.

Write your learnings in blog posts and share your learnings with others. In this way you will remember it better and people who will read your learnings will benefit from it as well. Sharing is learning together. When I write my blog posts about my learnings, it keeps generating new insights that I can further share and apply.

Follow up your conference contacts – you will be surprised of the extent of opportunities it will generate for you. Both for you to add value to your contacts and also to learn from them. Every event I have attended and followed up on my contacts and connections has brought me new and exciting opportunities to do what I enjoy doing in life – which is to add value for people by helping them to build their personal brand to succeed.

Every weekend reflect and pick your one key success of the week– what is one thing you are happy with on your achievement? And celebrate it – as a way to acknowledge success. This starts to create the success mindset and attract more success in your life. It works like a snowball effect – the more you notice and acknowledge little victories, the more of them will come your way. Enjoy doing it, but do keep your humbleness with you at all times for balance.

Motivation is something external to the person. It’s done to them. And it’s too difficult a job for you as a leader to constantly motivate your people. Inspire them instead. It’s much easier and enjoyable for you and more energizing for your people.

How to inspire instead of motivate? Here are the top 3 steps to inspire:

Find out what are their talents and strengths

Discover their highest values

Help them to achieve their aspirations – their STARs

Talents and Strengths

The magic is knowing your people’s talents – knowing what they are great at and helping them to apply the things they love doing. This makes them enjoy what they do and feel happy about it. When people know and are confident about their key talents and apply them in what they do and want to achieve, it enhances their success opportunity extraordinarily. It brings confidence, impact and focus to deliver with excellence.

Why would you as a leader in business want to spend time and effort to motivate someone to do things that they are not inspired about and will not feel passionate about doing? Instead give them the opportunity to do the job they are excited and inspired about. It takes less effort for you to place people in roles that they are inspired and talented to contribute and excel, rather than to keep motivating people to do a job they dislike in a culture they can not shine in.

Highest Values

If you are clear on what are your values and choose your job, role, relationships in accordance to them, you generate energy.

If among my strong values are independence and creativity, but I choose the job where I have to strictly follow the rules, like risk manager or underwriter, then I will not be happy about the content of my role as I will constantly have to do something that does not naturally resonate with my core being. The set of values that each individual has is unique to them.

Highest value – you are spontaneously inspired to do the job that resonates to your highest value. You get up and do it, You do not need a motivation to do it. Napoleon Hill called it, chief aim. It is a burning desire to fulfil. Doing the job that fulfils your highest value is one of the secrets to master your life. It’s intrinsic.

Lowest value – you need a motivation to do the job that is in congruence with your lowest values. You find it difficult and de-energizing. You do not enjoy doing a job that relates to your lowest values. Therefore you need an external stimulus to motivate you to complete that job.

It is more difficult than doing the job that you are naturally inspired by . And for leaders it takes much more effort, time and energy to motivate people to do the job that they do not feel naturally inspired to do. It is much more rewarding to inspire people to excel in their jobs that they enjoy doing and that are contributing to their highest values.

Inspiration is calling from within, building on intrinsic values and talents. Motivation is pushing from outside to do something that your person does not enjoy.

Help to reach their STARs

Nobody goes to work for the sake of the company. People go to work to fulfil their highest values, aspirations, to reach their stars – whatever stars mean for each and every individual. If they see how their job, vision, mission of company helps to fulfil their highest value, they are inspired to contribute and to be effective to deliver. If not – they have low productivity and need to be constantly motivated. If their job fulfils their highest value, they can not wait to get to work each and every day and add value to the company. They feel ownership, responsibility, commitment. They are engaged and constantly improve their customer service to deliver upon their personal excellence.

Your wisdom as a leader is to place people in the right role that will help them to reach their stars and add massive value to the company. The role that they feel inspired about, so you do not need to put an extra effort to motivate them. Instead – inspire your people by giving them projects and opportunities that play to their strengths , talents and values.

Your wisdom is to fill your day with high priority things where you add value. If you do not fill up your day with high priority actions that inspire you, it will be automatically filled with low value distractions projected by other people that are low according to their values.

Ask yourself on a daily basis what the highest priority actions I can do today that generates most income, inspiration etc. Rest – delegate to somebody else. How do you live an inspired life if you keep doing desperate things? There is always somebody that matches the job you need to delegate. Make sure its congruent with their values, so you do not need to micromanage and motivate them. Inspire them instead!

Are you living an inspired life or do you need to have motivation to get out of bed in the morning and go to work? If you are choosing your projects and job roles that allow you to work in accordance to your highest values, then you do not need motivation to go to work. You are excited to get out of bed in the morning and inspired to live a fulfilling life where you feel that you are contributing.

In this article I will share with you 3 steps that you can take to enhance your inspiration to live a fulfilled life.

As per Dr.John Demartini, the human behaviour and values expert – if you do not live in accordance to your values, you will have illnesses and constantly feel unhappy, as your mind protests against it through your body. If you are clear on what your values are and if you choose your job, your role, and your relationships in accordance to your values, you will generate energy. You are born to live a fulfilled life in accordance to your highest values. This set of values is unique to you. Whatever set of values you hold, dictates your destiny. Destiny is a destination of your life journey.

Highest value – you are spontaneously inspired to do things that are related to that. You get up and do it, you do not need motivation to do it. Napoleon Hill called it a chief aim. It is a burning desire to fulfil. This highest value is one of the secrets to mastering your life. It’s intrinsic. When the voice of the inside becomes louder, you start to master your life. Lowest value – need motivation to do things related to it.

Inspiration – calling from within, from the soul. Motivation – pushing from the outside to do it.

Wisdom is filling your day with high priority things. If you do not fill up your day with high priority actions that inspire you, it will be automatically filled with low value distractions projected by other people that are low according to their values. You make your choice and design your destiny.

Integrity – when we live to our highest values. Your brain is doing everything it can to help you maximize your living.

Selective biased attention – to the things that are of the highest values of our life. If you set a goal and place the attention that is in congruence with your highest value, you will have created the highest probability in achieving it. If you walk your talk, you increase your self worth, confidence and belief in yourself. Goals with the lowest values allow you to procrastinate and do not achieve. If your goal is in the highest value – you end up a leader in that space, if your goal is in your lowest value – you end up as a follower.

If you become deceased, its from not fulfilling your highest values. Modern medicine deals with symptoms not causes. Cause is related to your highest values. When you have more integrity to your highest values, you wake up your leader inside.

Let’ s be honest – nobody goes to work for the sake of the company. They go to work to fulfil their highest value. If they see how their job, vision, mission of the company helps to fulfil their highest value, they are inspired and are effective. If not – they generate low productivity. If their job fulfils their highest value, they can not wait to get to work. You will see ownership, and engaged people who know the product and will serve customers with excellence.

Here is a practical 3 step exercise for you to help you enhance what you are doing and how it contributes to your highest values:

1.step Write down the list of your responsibilities and tasks. And now – for each of them write down how specifically each item of your job responsibility helps to fulfil your highest value. Do it 30x times.

It has nothing to do with your job, it has to do with the perception of your job. How specifically doing this action helps you to fulfil your mission. Master of destiny uses the outside to fulfil their mission. No matter what you have in your life, it’s on the way, not in the way. It helps you to progress.

2.step During the week, make a list of everything you do and how it helps you to fulfil your highest values. Do it until you feel engaged and excited. And you will see – the days fly. You do not want to break, you are engaged and eat to live, not live to eat. You do not need a stimulus to keep yourself going.

3.step Ask yourself on a daily basis what are the highest priority actions that I can do today that generates the most inspiration, energy, income etc.? For the rest of actions – delegate them to somebody else. How can you live an inspired life, if you keep doing desperate things? There is always somebody that matches the job you need to delegate. Make sure it’s congruent with their values, so you do not need to micromanage.

Every human being wants to be appreciated by who they are. Be mindful of who you are, what are your highest values and how you can best serve the world by living a fulfilled life.

We all have a dream when we join a company or accept a new role. As employees we want to contribute to achieve the company’s success, perform with excellence, feel recognized, develop our capabilities and our careers. We want to reach the stars, whatever the stars mean for each of us; and for each of us it is different.

How do we, as leaders, inspire our people to achieve their dream, to reach their stars and to contribute to the company’s performance and strategy execution? – it is a million dollar question. If we were all doing this with excellence – our companies would constantly achieve top results in the market.

I have developed and successfully implemented for businesses the STAR model to better connect with peoples’ aspirations and for leaders to better understand how to inspire their people. The STAR model is very simple and easy to apply, and very impactful. When you connect to peoples’ hearts, minds and aspirations, you can radiate an inspiration from them with true passion.

Here is a short summary of the STAR model and questions to ask in each stage:

S – Start. Why did they join the company. What are their aspirations?

T – Target. What are they aiming to achieve? How can we channel it? Do we have the right resources to achieve the strategy?

A – Action. What should they do to achieve the goal? What appeals most to them? How can we be supportive?

R – Results. How are they progressing? How are they achieving the results? What else is needed for their inspiration, development and retention?

Keep connecting with your people and inspiring them to reach for STARs!